Yeah Mailman, I know you love the show but you really gotta stop doing this.

I'm prepared to give the show a lot of leeway on a lot of things, but I also thought the open was terrible. Not only terrible in an absolute sense, but also a terrible decision to alienate so many book fans immediately. I wonder how many book fans watched the open of epsiode 1 and turned off in disgust as it looked like the writers hadn't even read the books. Certainly it started off the series in a way that was very jarring for a lot of book fans and left them needing to win back trust, which they failed to do for many. Firstly, in the Moiraine scene, the insertion of "we don't know if it's a boy or a girl" seems jammed in and unnecessary. Even if they want to go the route of "maybe the girls could be the dragon", it'd be far better to do that later on by some conversation between Egwene and Moiraine where Egwene questions the assumption that the dragon must be reborn a male and Moiraine admits that as people don't remember their past lives, there is no way to know for sure that people are reborn the same gender. I think that makes sense within the world and would go down far better with book readers, who by that point would hopefully be more confident that this is simple misdirection for show-only viewers. As is, it came across clunky and immediately alienating. To then follow that with Liandrin's "you make it filthy" just adds insult to injury. In my opinion it's even worse. The darkfriend angle is almost irrelevant. The Black Ajah constantly have to worry about being caught in a lie. They're not going to just casually throw out a pointless lie like that, whatever the circumstances. It being Liandrin vs it being some other Aes Sedai is close to irrelevant in the scene making sense. It becomes clear later on that Aes Sedai know enough about saidin/saidar that they are not ignorant enough to say this so it's just a poorly written scene in my opinion. It feels like it was written as a standalone scene that someone thought would be a good, dramatic open, without regard to the details of what was said. Again though, even if all the criticisms I just laid out were ultimately justifiable in some way, it's still blindingly obvious that a large proportion of book readers are going to watch these first couple of scenes in horror, thinking "what on earth is this I'm hearing?" Book fans could have been some of the strongest proponents of the show if they liked it and they will be the harshest and most vocal critics if they don't like it. I feel like there was a meeting about the opening scenes where the attitude was "let's just hit the book fans with the fact that there are going to be a ton of changes right from the start and then from that starting point they can start to enjoy the show." Unnecessary and incredibly poor decision in my opinion. So many people wanted it to succeed and the writers just needed to work with the book fans a little more in that regard, be a little more gentle with the plot points they want to bring in that deviate from the book rather than "BAM in your face" in scene 1.

Given that I've posted a couple of times a little off topic, I'd also like to give my main feelings on the cancellation. I think it's a real shame given the direction things were going. Season 3 was a genuinely good season of television and if it had been that quality from the start, I imagine we'd be in a very different situation. Circumstances also played a part. Had the timetable been sped up by a couple of years, we'd probably be getting a season 4, even given the exact same seasons 1-3, so that's unfortunate. Rather than be annoyed at Rafe, or anyone else though, my main feeling towards everyone involved with the show is gratitude. It seems clear to me that Rafe put his heart and soul into doing the best he could with the show, regardless of whether I agree with all the choices he made. I always thought that WoT would be far too hard to turn into a good tv show to ever see it happen, yet they dealt with some aspects of it better than I could have imagined (some blunders also, don't get me wrong). There are characters, cultures, scenes and moments that I never thought I'd see on screen, that I'm super happy to have been able to see brought to life. There are also a huge number of other people who did a great job on the show, both actors and behind the scenes. Some no doubt cared more than others, but particularly seeing interviews with many of the actors, it's clear that they took the job of representing their character very seriously. I loved the cast and some of the performances were brilliant, it's a real shame for them that they don't get to continue the show. Some of Zoe's work in season 1, Madeleine as a damane and Josha in Rhuidean jump out immediately as outstanding but so many cast members did the show and the books proud with their portrayal. Not that they'll read this, but to everyone who gave it their all, I wish them all the best in their future careers and I'll be rooting for them to succeed in whatever they do next.

@expat those questions don't give any sort of serious blocker to a good AI adaptation. Even now people can give an AI a fairly short prompt and it creates a long answer with a load of extra stuff that it thinks belongs there. There's no reason an AI couldn't come up with its best guess at everything you are asking, just like a human can. Of course, just like a human (i.e. Rafe), not everyone will agree with all the answers. The creative process would be long and intertwined with human(s) though. One day, far in the future, you may be able to tell the AI to create the show that will appeal to the largest number of people with almost no human input, or create 10 versions of the show that between them will appeal to almost everyone, and people can be directed to the right one for them. Maybe your AI assistant will even know you so well you get a personalised version. Before that though, people will be prompting the AI and then saying "make Rand a bit taller" "this scene needs to be more emotional, I want tears in his eyes but he's holding them back from coming out, and a subtle look of anguish on his face. He's trying to hold it together and just about managing" "let's focus more on Logain's journey, I'm thinking we could show his capture, even though it's not described in the books." There would be a ton of back and forth and it would still be a very large project to get something the creator is happy with, but it would be orders of magnitude less expensive than it currently is, and the end result should be better because the creator has such fine control over everything. The final version could have more soul than anything created by humans alone and the only way to describe it as soulless would be if you were stubbornly deciding to do so rather than making an objective judgement on the final content. There would also be no issues such as not being quite happy with how a scene fits into the final version but it being too expensive to go back and film it again etc. Characters could either be based on real people/actors who have given their permission for their likeness to be used (and been compensated for that of course) or could be created entirely from the book description combined with the AI and creator's imagination. First, this whole process will be done by the same people who are currently making movies/shows but eventually it will be democratised and people will make their own versions on something like youtube. The people creating the most popular versions will have channels like the big youtube stars of today. The people who own the rights will take a cut of the ad revenue from people who make shows out of their IP. When it becomes possible, why wouldn't they take the opportunity to monetise the IP in this way rather than spend loads to make 1 version themselves which will appeal to fewer people than the combined efforts of everyone who wants to do it. It always amazes me when people say that some new technology is never going to happen because of legal or moral issues. A few years ago many people insisted that driverless cars wouldn't happen in the next 50 years because of the legal complexities of liability in accidents and "what will the car do if it has a choice between hitting an old lady or a young child" etc. We already have driverless taxis in multiple cities around the world. Name one technology in history that people wanted to use for something that would create profit but which has been delayed 10 years or more because of legal or moral issues. Right now we are discussing all this on the internet, which allows the most horrendous things to happen. Child abuse, encouragement to commit suicide, terrorist material, disinformation, cyber attacks... the list goes on. Yet we have the internet. Social media has most of the worst of those issues with rich and famous CEOs, yet they continue to run their businesses and make a ton of money. The idea that it will be technically possible to create superior tv shows and movies for orders of magnitude less cost, yet it won't happen because people are worried they might get sued is incredibly naive. If one company is worried about that, someone else will do it instead.

What those pointing out the current limitations of AI seem to be failing to realise, is that the restrictions are in place because the AI is still quite dumb. If you let a current LLM loose, it starts telling people to kill themselves or praising Hitler etc because it just trains on everything it sees and spits it back out with no regard for truth or consequence. When you have an AI smart enough to make judgements and not be easily be fooled by a human trying to get it to do something it shouldn't, it will require far less hard coded restrictions. When this will happen is uncertain, but assuming technology continues to progress, it will happen eventually. It won't be an immediate "here's our new version, all restrictions gone now", but over time AI will get good enough that film studios will be able to use it to make movies and shows far more cheaply than they now do. As it improves further, it will become safer to allow the general public to use it with fewer and fewer restrictions. The ideas along the lines of "but it isn't allowed to do nudity" "it isn't allowed to use the word ugly" "it won't create a picture of a braid" are equivalent to "but it needs to use an opening book made by humans so it doesn't make stupid moves early in the game" for early chess computers. These are simply restrictions necessary because of the underlying weakness of the system at this point in time. They aren't features of AI that will remain the same forever.

Not seen anyone comment on this so far but the way Perrin ended the battle does a good job of showing the different things he has learned from different people. Not only the fighting ability, way he behaves with Faile and nod to the way of the leaf after, but asking Padan Fain “why” was what Ingtar told Perrin he should do if he ever got the chance, rather than just killing him, and that is what allowed him to find a way to end the battle.

Who'd have thought Alanna would have more shafts in her after Ihvon's death than before.

And there have been multiple mentions of ta'avaren in the show. The equivalence is that in the book, it has not been explicitly stated "Rand can channel, he creates a lightning strike without realising what he is doing." It happens without explicit explanation and the reader needs to speculate as to how/why it happens. This is fine and I'm just pointing out one clear example of similar writing in the book, to demonstrate that this is not some crazy, show-only idea that we can have things happen to our characters before it has been explicitly stated "Rand can channel" or "Mat is lucky".

Yes, this is my point. It is fine that we do not yet know. That is a normal part of storytelling. Maybe it is his luck, maybe it is ta'avaren, maybe it is something else. The viewer is supposed to speculate at this point and book readers will obviously lean towards Mat's luck because they are expecting that to appear at some point. Show only viewers may think it's ta'avaren, or they may not have picked up on what that is exactly and they may not know what the reason might be, or they may not have given it a second thought. All of this is fine. "They haven't given a clear and definite explanation yet therefore the show is stupid" is not a very good takeaway from this or other scenes. Have you forgotten Rand being saved by a lightning strike in book one, before it has been explained why that is not totally ridiculous?

A common theme in your posts Mailman, is that you seem to want the show to explain everything ahead of time. You don't like that Mat gets lucky before someone has explicitly stated "btw everyone, Mat is lucky, look at how lucky Mat is." What is wrong with having Mat get lucky a few times before it is noticed by the characters that he seems to have some weirdly extreme luck? It's like you want a narrator talking over the show who explains every scene to you and how it is eventually going to make sense. It's ok for the show to do things that aren't fully explained, or even partially explained and then either the explanation appears later, or maybe it doesn't. The viewer is not supposed to fully understand everything as soon as it appears on the screen. They are supposed to use their imagination and speculate at times.

Wow, that was incredible. I was worried that they hadn't built up the knowledge of the Aiel enough to have the Rhuidean episode pay off yet but they smashed it out the park. Beat all expectations of how well they would manage to do it. A lot of Aiel set off initially in lots of groups, each with a cutting of the Tree of Life. I took that to explain why they were moving around in small groups in future generations. The grandfather said they were going to meet others but having that small group and only the two of them stick with it helped to show how hard the path they were on was for me.

I see. I don't know what will happen in the show with the box but I don't think it's worth worrying over the possibility that they "might" do something that doesn't make sense, so far the box is fine. Even if the contents do go up in flames, it feels easy enough to create an explanation for it that it should be a non-issue too. One example would be Siuan being able to tie off some very basic weaves as a secret ability. Many Aes Sedai have something they worked out and haven't shared in the books and Siuan is one of the most powerful Aes Sedai of her time. Another possibility would be that the locking mechanism is such that forcing it open will create a spark, and there could be something in the box that will shoot up in flames if there is a spark. I'm sure you could creatively come up with some other options.

I'm not sure, I haven't given that scene much thought. I could be wrong but doesn't someone, maybe even Siuan, have a box like this in the books that she does something to with the power to keep it safe before tying off weaves is a thing?

Minus 6% from what?

No, it wouldn't have to be. For example, it may just be a complex locking mechanism. She channels to lock it, no physical key could open it and it could be very difficult for another channeller to unlock without knowing the mechanism. I salute your dedication to finding flaws with every scene in the show though.

Only watched it once so far so apologies if I'm remembering incorrectly, but I thought they worked out that Liandrin was going to Tanchico because the sign she made under the bed of her son was a sign that the people of Tanchico make in the place of someone's death and also the place of their birth after they die. So Liandrin making that sign where he died suggests she knows she is going to Tanchico to make the sign where he was born also. Then they are just connecting that it could also make sense that the collar could be there, which would tie in with Liandrin knowing she's going there. A thought process of "Liandrin is going to Tanchico, but why... oh Tanchico is near where the Seanchan landed so it makes sense as a place the collar could be."

I don't necessarily agree with respect to this scene but in general I completely agree with this and it's something you will probably have to turn a bit of a blind eye to if you want to enjoy the show. Like you, I hope that they don't push it too far and would like to see it be consistent, but I don't think it will be if they see an opportunity to film a cool scene that just needs a bit of tweaking to character power to work as they want. On the back and forth, I don't think it would be too productive and it's not relevant to this sneak peek but the key points would be that Moiraine knows the dragonmount prophecy, multiple people see Rand and think he's an Aiel in the book, he has the red hair that is rare outside the Aiel, and yet Moiraine shows no sign of favouring him being the dragon over the other 2 for most of book 1. It should have been immediately clear to her, and sure she could bring the others along "just in case" or you could argue that she could favour him but we don't read through her eyes so we don't find out, but I think it's probably just a mistake due to not having the whole story when starting writing. I remember Egwene running with the Aiel and them gaining respect for her for keeping up but I couldn't give you a page and a quote. Fwiw, I really liked the books for being generally good in terms of keeping the rules of the world consistent and realism within the world, and I also don't like it when the show deviates from that too much. I just think a more balanced view on the book and show would recognise that the books have plenty of flaws in this regard but can be enjoyed immensely despite that, and the show has even more flaws in this regard but again can be enjoyed despite that. It's simply a question of degree and it is fine to draw the line somewhere between the book and show in terms of what you're ok with, but there doesn't seem to be the realisation on your part that this is what you're doing. You argue very much as if everything the show does is totally wrong and a deviation from realism is a disaster that would never have happened in the books, and I don't think that's a fair reflection of reality.

We could go back and forth on this and your next answer but it would be way OT. The point is that you are likely prepared to give the benefit of the doubt and make excuses or find reasons for most unrealistic book stuff, while nitpicking faults with the show that most people may not even find unrealistic at all. There are many flaws with the show but this scene is good TV that is not unreasonable in terms of realism compared to any fantasy/sci-fi/action tv show that I've seen. If there is not a single fantasy/sci-fi/action show/movie in which the level of realism meets your demands then that is unfortunate, it seems these genres are not for you on screen!

You may however remember the fact that Moiraine visited the Two Rivers in book 1 looking for someone born on Dragonmount during the Aiel war and was unable to work out for most of the book that it was probably the guy who looks like an Aielman rather than the 2 guys who look like regular Two Rivers folk. Or you may remember that it is apparently possible for Egwene to keep up running with the Aiel day after day, who are basically all ultra marathon runners trained since birth, with no running training, as long as you are stubborn and determined enough. Or you may wonder why the Queen of Manetheren didn't sacrifice herself to destroy the trolloc army before all of Manetheren's army was destroyed, rather than waiting until afterwards, if it is indeed possible to draw too much of the power and do orders of magnitude more damage than you otherwise could. Etc etc etc. It is a fantasy series and you need to be ok with turning a blind eye to some unrealistic aspects if you are going to enjoy it. You must have done this while reading the books but you are clearly totally unwilling to look past anything with even remotely questionable realism in the show. I imagine that you would have happily read right on past if this scene was written in the book with some accompanying sentences such as "Person X was so shocked that their lifelong friend Person Y was a darkfriend that they didn't even embrace the source, simply staring with unbelieving eyes as Person Y sliced them in half." "Person Y had been preparing for a moment like this for so many years that they had a selection of nasty weaves ready to go, taking out 3 other sitters before they could even react." "As the dust settled, on top of the horror of the situation, Person Z was overwhelmed by a feeling of humiliation that just 5 members of the Black Ajah had been able to deal so comfortably with the rest of the sitters. Had they grown soft over all the years of politicking?" etc. In TV format, you can't have the explanatory sentences surrounding a scene like this that would perhaps allow you to enjoy it when it's in book format, so you need to fill in the explanation yourself. Still though, as others have said, this would have been unbelievably shocking for the other sitters and I'm more than happy to give it the benefit of the doubt that this shock was enough to make up for the numerical disadvantage for the Black Ajah. You could certainly argue either way whether this is the case (and you are!) but it's nowhere near unrealistic enough to ruin the enjoyment of a great action scene for me. Of course, we all have different thresholds for how much disbelief we are prepared to suspend in different situations.

I really enjoyed the sneak peek and very excited for the new season. It's a miracle that you ever enjoyed the books Mailman. I don't think they would hold up too well to the level of scrutiny that you are determined to give the show. Or perhaps the book forum is full of you saying how much you hate the books too, I haven't checked!!

All very good points, think you've changed my mind and it is more likely to refer to Lanfear. That Amazon summary is pretty explicit that they're going down the Lanfear and Rand relationship route pretty hard, and also that it's not going to be so obvious in the show that Lanfear is going to choose evil, making Egwene and Rand's behaviour in that scene fit better. The scene in the final episode of s2 where Elayne heals Rand and he wakes up to see her had me believing that he would fall for Elayne pretty soon but perhaps that goes on the backburner for a while, particularly if they are not in the same places for a while as you suggest.

The look on his face and the tears. It looked to me the emotions of someone saying "I'm so so sorry but I do." I didn't expect that they will continue the Rand actually loving Lanfear theme now that he knows who it is but you and Skipp are right that they might. Seems very plausible now that I think about it, even though it's hard for me to imagine from book Rand. It looks like the same scene but you're right that it might not be. You make some good counterpoints and I'm not as sure as I was before reading them. With such a short clip, it's always possible that with a little more context, the scene would look and feel very different so it could go either way. Time will tell, looking forward to watching and finding out!

In the show, Egwene is devastated because she believes Rand is dead, having been clearly in a relationship with him up to that point. She then finds out he is alive at the end of season 2 and we can probably assume that in season 3 she starts off assuming that they will still be in a relationship. She will have a ton of emotions about the whole situation. To then discover that Rand is in love with her friend would probably be pretty distressing for her. My take on watching the scene is that Egwene will still love Rand early in season 3 and this scene is her discovering that he loves Elayne instead. Also, Rand's reaction seems off if it's Lanfear. Of course, all is possible until we see the episodes, so perhaps your counterpoint turns out to be correct 🙂

Agreed that it will be in reference to Elayne and not Lanfear. The trailer is shot to make you think it refers to Lanfear but I don't think it will be. It doesn't make a lot of sense that Egwene would believe that Rand was genuinely in love with Lanfear and it doesn't feel like the right reaction if she did. Feels like some sort of disgust and/or bafflement would be in her mix of emotions. Also the tears and agony on Rand's face suggest a situation where he does love the person in question and is devastated about upsetting Egwene. If you ignore the sequence of shots in the trailer and just watch the few seconds in isolation, I think Lanfear being the topic is unlikely.